Recipefiesta

Gentle cycling is the perfect pace to enjoy the region’s sunflower fields and medieval towns – with gourmet food and fine wine along the way

As I cycle in golden light through the Loire’s vineyards, I have the sudden wish to wear a flowing floral dress, tuck a sunflower behind my ear and answer only to the name Delphine. Opulent chateaux, honeyed stone villages, blazing fields of sunflowers … the Loire is so ridiculously and relentlessly beautiful it’s no wonder artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Émile Vernon made it their home.

A short zip across to Paris on the Eurostar and then an hour south on the TGV to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and it feels as if we’ve stepped into a live JMW Turner landscape (he toured the region in 1826).

From the Cambrian Mountains to Cardigan Bay, the 83-mile Teifi Valley Trail is a grassroots initiative designed to revive a once-thriving area

Up here, the river was a mere gurgle; a babbling babe finding its way into the world. A few sheep roamed, a kite wheeled and a spring-clean wind ruffled the tussocks on the barren hills and rippled the pools. It was a stark yet striking beginning. As we followed a brand new fingerpost, skirted Llyn Teifi – the river’s official source – and picked up the fledgling flow, there was a sense great things lay ahead, for us both.

The Teifi rises in Ceredigion’s Cambrian Mountains – the untramped “green desert of Wales” – and pours into Cardigan Bay 75 miles (120km) south-west. It’s one of the longest rivers wholly within Wales and, historically, one of its most significant: the beating heart of the country’s fishing and wool-weaving industries, 12th-century abbeys at either end, Wales’s oldest university en route.

Private beach clubs dominate much of the Italian coast, but you can still find pristine stretches that are framed by nature and open to all

As an Australian living in Italy, I grew up within an hour of some of the most pristine coastline in the world, so the Italian penchant for private beach clubs is something I’ll never quite grow accustomed to.

Along some of Italy’s most naturally beautiful stretches of beach, from the Amalfi Coast to the Cinque Terre, private, exclusive beach clubs and five-star hotels occupy the best patches of shoreline. The natural beauty that made these places famous can feel increasingly roped off.

Beyond the Tuscan capital, there are exquisite towns with Medici fortresses, stunning frescoes, Roman amphitheatres – and not a selfie stick in sight

First, it was Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik. Now, Florence has joined the most overtouristed destinations in the world: its 365,000 inhabitants shared their city last year with 4.6 million visitors. The director of the city’s Accademia gallery – home to Michelangelo’s David – talked in 2024 about “hit and run” tourism, describing visitors “on a quick in-and-out mission to take selfies … trampling the city without contributing anything”. Local author Margherita Calderoni describes Via Camillo Cavour, a street leading to the Duomo, as a “rancid soup” of chain restaurants and “shops selling plastic trinkets from who knows where”.

Although steps are being taken – the city council has introduced a ban on new short-term lets and is promoting sights in lesser-known neighbourhoods – tackling overtourism is a challenge. And other Tuscan cities, such as Siena and San Gimignano, are suffering too. But beyond these honeypots, Italy’s fifth-largest region is full of glories, with not a takeaway chain or selfie stick in sight. Here are six of my favourites.

Clear waterfalls, mountain meadows and high-altitude refuges are just some of the highlights of this less-visited part of the stunning range

The “forgotten” Dolomites lie to the east, far from the crowds of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Val Gardena. Belluno is the main gateway, two hours north of Venice by train or a drive up the A27. From here, the upper Piave valley leads into the quieter Friulian mountains. The land rises gently, opening into pasture, then stone lifting into spires above the meadows.

Traditional local councils, the Regole di Comunità, still manage the land and forests collectively here, sustaining artisans and alpine farmers in scattered hamlets shaped by shared work and resilience. Pastìn (a minced, seasoned blend of pork and beef), malga cheeses and polenta, once staples for long days in the mountains, are still shared over grappa at the end of the day. Beyond the hamlets, paths lead towards Monte Pelmo or drift into the beech woods of Cansiglio, where deer call at dusk. It’s a fine place to experience mountain culture, and these are some of my favourite places.

From cycling in the Cinque Terre to sipping espresso at a secret spot overlooking the Colosseum, here are some of your Italian highlights

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When we visited Venice, we stayed in Padua. It’s half an hour to Venezia Mestre (Venice’s mainland suburb), trains are frequent and cheap, as long as you avoid expresses, and easy to book if you have the Trenitalia app. You’ll find accommodation and restaurants significantly cheaper if you are based in Padua and day trip into Venice, and Padua is worth exploring in its own right. There are also trains to Vicenza, Verona, Bologna and Bassano del Grappa – we found it the perfect base for a public transport trip in north-east Italy.
Fergal O’Shea

In the 1980s ‘the Antwerp Six’ put Flanders on the fashion map. Now a major new exhibition celebrates the designers’ legacy and provides the perfect excuse to visit Belgium’s vibrant second city

You know you’re in a city that takes its fashion seriously when even the Virgin Mary is dressed head to toe in couture. A short walk from Antwerp’s old town, with its ornate medieval guild houses and cobblestone streets, is the baroque church of St Andrews. Like many of the city’s Catholic churches, it has beautiful stained glass windows, an exuberantly carved wooden pulpit and more artworks by Flemish masters than you can shake an incense stick at. But we’re here to pay homage to an art form of a different kind.

In a quiet chapel, an elegant 16th-century wooden statue of the Madonna is clothed not in her usual blue cloak, but a dress of pale gauzy fabric, trimmed with a collar of white pigeon feathers, custom made by renowned Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester. It’s a bold statement but one that’s entirely in-keeping with a city where a love of fashion seems woven into the fabric of everyday life.

To mark the anniversary there are dozens of events planned around Ashdown Forest (aka the Hundred Acre Wood) – and, of course, playing Pooh Sticks is always a good idea

Deep in a medieval hunting forest, amid 6,500 acres of heathland, a wooden bridge spans a tributary of the River Medway. Every single day, no matter the weather, people flock to stand on its slats and cheer on sticks as they float downstream.

I know this because on a frosty but sunny morning, (“a very long time ago now, about last Friday”, as children’s author AA Milne might have said), I stood with two such adults jumping up and down with delight as my little piece of oak stormed ahead and won the race.

Tucked away in a remote valley, these cosy off-grid cabins come with a wild-swimming pond, loads of wildlife and a farm where kids can run free

Holidaying as a single parent is a tricky balance. You want to ringfence the kind of extended one-on-one time that can be difficult to find during term time; but too much of that and you know you’ll drive each other a little crazy. Kids need other kids, and you could do with some adult company too. You also need a break. It’s a nice idea to pack the car with camping gear and head out into the wilderness, but it can be a lot of work – and you end up in a field, attempting to put up a tent, alone.

Friends of mine have suggested holiday parks, some of them with bars and restaurants and a daily schedule of kids’ activities. That all sounds a bit overstimulating. I’d been dreaming about sinking into a quiet landscape. But would there be enough to do?

The Highlands and Islands are rightly lauded for their superb seafood – but these days it’s not reserved for fine dining and can be found at the simplest waterside shacks and inns

The best oysters of my life arrive on a polystyrene tray, eaten elbow-to-elbow with strangers at a table littered with empty shells and damp paper napkins. We huddle beneath a tarpaulin, sheltering from the fine spray of rain rattling on the roof, the wind whipping around the hulking CalMac ferry moored metres away, and the beady-eyed scavenging gulls.

“Have you tried this? You have to,” says a woman who has driven from Glasgow just to eat here, pressing a rollmop herring into my hand. I take a bite, the thick skin giving way to sweet and salty flesh, juices running down my chin. Elegant dining this is not, but all the better for it. This is Oban Seafood Hut, tucked beside the ferry terminal for boats heading into the Sound of Mull. Diners shuffle around a shared table, listening for order numbers, with plates piled high with langoustines, crab and oysters. It’s cash only. In the back room, a team of women butter thick slices of soft white bread for crab sandwiches, wrapping them in clingfilm without ceremony, to be sold within minutes.

From a beachside bothy to a Highland bunkhouse and lochside inn, here are some of Scotland’s bonniest boltholes

With its cheery, cherry-red tin roof, you can’t miss the sturdy stone bothy on the Ben Damph estate. The family-owned 5,868-hectare (14,500-acre) estate nudges up to Loch Torridon, and the bothy, constructed from the ruins of an old black house (a traditional thatched home), has views over the loch to the mountains beyond. Restored by a team of stonemasons, it has two rooms (each sleeping two) warmed by log burners. The furniture has been made from the estate’s timber by a local cabinet maker. Between the two rooms is a “sitooterie” with picture windows framing views over to Ben Alligin. There’s no electricity, but there is running water and a gas-powered hot shower next to the bothy; a compost loo is in the garden.
Sleeps 4, from £342.50 for two nights, bendamph.com

The machair is nature’s dazzling display on these remote islands, but this rare habitat also plays a vital role for wildlife and the resurgent crofting community

Some 8,000 years ago, behind the retreating glaciers, a remarkable environment was born on the western fringes of Scotland’s Outer Hebridean islands, forged by the wind and waves. It began with rising sea levels and sweeping Atlantic gales depositing crushed shell-sand inland; this settled over glacial sediment to form a coastal belt of lime-rich soil. Buffered from the sea by mounting sand dunes, this winter-wet and summer-sunned substrate produced one of Europe’s rarest habitats: the “machair”, Gaelic for “fertile grassy plain”. Abounding in diverse, colourful wildflowers and an array of associated wildlife, coastal machair is a precious, globally important outpost of biodiversity, supporting everything from purple orchids and nodding blue campanulas to endangered birdlife, otters and rare bumblebees.

As a wildflower fanatic, visiting the Outer Hebrides in peak machair bloom has long been an aspiration. Over the years, I’d read accounts of its arresting, vibrant seasonality – its shifting blankets of red and white clover, yellow trefoil and creamy eyebright, bold against the sky. Although remnant machair is also found in north-west Ireland, its greatest extent lies on this Scottish archipelago, notably the islands of Barra, Uist and Harris.

The Lincolnshire village, the height of fashion a century ago, offers fascinating history, a woodland cinema, excellent cycle routes and a deeply restorative feel

It was 6.30am, the cockcrow slot at Jubilee Park lido, and still not quite light. I hadn’t wanted to come this early – it was the only time I’d been able to book. But as I slid into the pool – heated to a delicious 29C – I realised it was a gift. Vapours rose dreamily into cool air laced with owl hoots and the whiff of dewy blooms, and I swam into a sunrise that became more vivid with every stroke. A man in the next lane paused to admire the reddening dawn too; he was hungover, he said, but had come to do his morning lengths nonetheless. A cure of sorts.

Bath, Harrogate, Buxton – Woodhall? This Lincolnshire village isn’t one of Britain’s headline spa towns. Most probably don’t know where it is – 18 miles (29km east of Lincoln, for the record. But at the turn of the 20th century, Woodhall Spa was among the most fashionable places to be seen, to be healed.

The vertiginous Valais canton offers adventures aplenty, from abseiling down gorges to wild swims in glacial pools – and nights swapping hiking tales in mountain huts

Thick grey-green mud squidges through my toes as I step into the icy, irresistible water. I’m on the descent from the Britannia Hut at the foot of the Allalinhorn in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, and this turquoise pool of glacial meltwater has been on the horizon tempting me for an hour. I peel off all five layers of clothing and plunge into the murky water. After a night in a shared dorm without showers it’s bliss.

In winter, the jagged ridges of the Valais are the domain of expert skiers and ice climbers, but in summer the lower slopes become accessible to hikers, with the added bonus of the ski lift infrastructure. You can be surrounded by dramatic peaks with the security of well-marked trails ranging from gentle strolls to serious alpine routes. I’m here to hike to mountain huts, test my nerves on via ferrata routes, and fill my city-dweller lungs with clean Alpine air.

Taking a leaf out of Kenneth Grahame’s book, our writer spends a few days getting lost among the woods and riverside villages of Oxfordshire and Berkshire

Strolling through a deep tangle of beech trees to get some fresh air after a long drive, I think of the scene in Kenneth Grahame’s wistful story The Wind in the Willows, where Mole gets lost in the Wild Wood. “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.”

I’ve come to South Oxfordshire to explore what was once Grahame’s old stomping ground. Although I don’t share his character’s fear of the woods, I do share his own wonder for this part of the country, close to suburbia yet wrinkled with pockets of wildness. It’s one of those spring days when the light feels elastic and daffodils brighten the verges of muddy lanes. The moon is rising, however, and smoke drifts from the chimney of a cottage just beyond the woods. Nocturnal creatures may be rousing but I’m feeling the pull of a cosy burrow. I leave the trees and head back to my accommodation, Bonni B&B, in Hill Bottom.

Good wine, cheap tapas, ramshackle decor and a sense of history are the key ingredients of these Madrileño institutions. I went on a bar crawl to find my favourite

The first hurdle to overcome when searching for the Spanish capital’s top bodegas is the correct interpretation of the word “bodega”. It is defined as a warehouse, winery, wine cellar and wine shop or bar specialising in wine. In Spanish slang it can also mean a convenience store.

I asked several people working in the Madrid wine trade, and they all struggled to define exactly what a bodega is – and sometimes disagreed with each other. For example, while La Bodega de los Reyes fits the description because it has a wine cellar, a nearby bar owner said it couldn’t be classed as a bodega as it was just a wine shop.

On the north coast of Spain you can see some of the world’s oldest art, explore a stunning medieval village, then watch surfers ride Atlantic swells

Exploring the area west of Santander feels like being in a time machine. Within a half-hour drive of the Cantabrian capital on Spain’s green northern coast, you can stumble upon prehistoric cave art, a perfectly preserved medieval town and a laid-back beach resort.

When I began my weekend trip, it was raining, so my journey started in the Upper Paleolithic period, at the Cave of Altamira, a Unesco world heritage site, staring up at some of the oldest art on Earth. Well, almost. The original cave was largely closed to the public decades ago to protect the fragile paintings, so we were inside the Neocueva, a painstakingly reconstructed replica built beside it that costs just €3 to enter.

While Málaga battles overtourism down the coast, this ‘forgotten’ working port city revels in its outsider status

Perched high on the battlements of Almería’s 10th-century Alcazaba, looking over the mosaic of flat roofs tumbling down to the sea, I’m reminded of author Gerald Brenan’s travel classic South from Granada, and his impression upon arriving in Almería in 1920: “Certainly, it seemed that the sea was doubly Mediterranean here, and the city … contained within it echoes of distant civilisations.”

A British adventurer, Hispanist and fringe member of the Bloomsbury group, Brenan had walked to Almería from where he was living near Granada, apparently to buy extra furniture in preparation for a visit from Virginia Woolf and friends. A century later, my journey here in a 30-year-old van from London is somewhat less notable, but as I marvel at the almost surreal incandescence of the Med, and the maze of ancient streets below me, I too am aware of a sensation of time travel.

Your top off-the-beaten track discoveries, from gorges in Galicia to vineyards in La Rioja
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Recently travelling from Madrid to San Sebastián, we spent three days in picturesque Briñas in La Rioja, staying at the beautiful Finca Torre de Briñas (doubles from €189 B&B). The neighbouring town, Haro, reached via a 40-minute walk by the Ebro River, hosts several of the largest wine producers in the region (CVNE and Muga are recommended). You can stop in and sample them, before heading into the town centre, which has several tapas spots to fuel the walk back to the hotel. Bliss.
Tom Dickson

A cycle tour of the Sierra Nevada backcountry proves a bumpy but beautiful ride through cinematic scenery

When you get into a van with an Englishman, five Irishmen and a Scotsman, you know someone is going to end up looking silly. For the next few days, my aim is for it not to be me. The van is taking us from busy Málaga to remote Andalucía for four days of gravel biking, something I have never done and for which I am not sure I am cut out.

Most of my cycling experience is limited to a flat five-mile commute through London, or long-distance road touring holidays. I love sailing across smooth asphalt, and have always been slightly snobby about the rough stuff. Why bump along when you can glide?

England’s largest forest has an aura reminiscent of parts of Canada or Finland. This year it celebrates its centenary with new trails and dark sky events

Deep in Kielder Forest, on the northern side of the vast Kielder Water stands Silvas Capitalis, a giant, two-storey timber head, one of the most striking of the 20 sculptures tucked between the pines. It’s an eerie sight, almost shocking; its mouth ajar, as if astounded by all it sees. It’s my first visit to Kielder, and my face has been wearing a similar expression since I stepped out of the car at the lakeside trying to take in the scale of the landscapes unfolding around me.

Kielder doesn’t look like England – at least, not the England I know. For a start, it’s vast; 250 sq miles (648 sq km), with 158m trees, mostly sitka spruce conifers planted by hand. And even though it’s a plantation, there’s a wilderness feel that reminds me of Finland or Canada; a great swathe of nature at its most intense. It’s a working forest, involving 500 full-time jobs (not including tourism) and 2026 marks the centenary of the very first plantings, when the UK was in need of timber reserves after the demands of the first world war.

Some of the best under-the-radar attractions across the Channel include steampunk wonders in Calais and the largest collection of impressionist works outside Paris

You don’t need to venture too far into France to find its wow factor. Indeed, within minutes of exiting the ferry or Channel Tunnel, you can be staring a fire-breathing dragon in the face. The Dragon de Calais is a 25-metre-long mechanical beast that stomps along the renovated sea front carrying 48 passengers on its back (adult ticket €9.50), emitting jets of fire, steam and water from its nostrils. It was created by the team behind Les Machines de L’île, a collection of steampunk wonders including a 12-metre elephant, in Nantes.

Designed as a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Med, today the scenic waterway from Toulouse to Sète is seen as a living ‘work of art’

Centuries before Donald Trump started playing around with the world economy, “tariff” was a levy paid to Spain by ships using the strait of Gibraltar; it was named for Tarifa, the town near the strait’s narrowest point. France’s kings had long dreamed of a waterway linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean: as well as depriving the Spanish monarch of easy money, it would save ships a long voyage around Spain and Portugal, risking storms and pirates.

From the Atlantic, vessels can reach Toulouse from the Gironde estuary (on the Garonne River), but not until the 1660s did anyone have a viable plan for the remaining 200km to the Med. Considered one of the biggest engineering feats of the 17th century, Pierre-Paul Riquet’s Canal du Midi (finished in 1681 and called the Canal Royal du Languedoc until the revolution) rewrote the history of transport and commerce in the south of France – for centuries it carried wheat and wine, people and post.

The RN7 road to the Côte d’Azur is enjoying a renaissance among lovers of slow travel in search of offbeat France

‘We were five people in my parents’ 2CV; we would set out at 3am and by 10am, around about Lyon, my father would need a break. My mother would set up a deckchair for him under a tree by the side of the road and he would sleep before driving the rest of the way to Toulon.”

On a recent road trip through France, I met up with Thierry Doillon, a vintage car fanatic who helped restore a 1950s petrol station on the Route Nationale 7. I wanted to talk about the heyday of this iconic road (so famous that singer-songwriter Charles Trenet released a song about it in 1955) and why it’s enjoying a renaissance with holidaymakers.

From Normandy to Provence, our readers enjoy great art, architecture and outdoor activities in France
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Vichy is not on everyone’s radar as a must visit French town, but it really is a delight to spend a few days in. I discovered it while on a bicycle trip around central France, and its famous waters did wonders for my tired legs and muscles. Vichy is a historic spa town famous for its spring waters and its art nouveau and belle époque architecture. A thriving cultural scene means that, whenever you visit, you’ll find concerts, theatre, opera and exhibitions, especially at the town’s opera house and the iconic Grand Casino. Vichy is also a shopper’s paradise, with more than 500 boutique shops in the heart of the town. When all that shopping and walking has worked up a thirst, taste the famous Vichy waters for free at Hall des Sources (listed on the Accidentally Wes Anderson website). The city is easy to explore on foot or by bike, with riverside paths along the Allier River, pretty neighbourhoods with pastel-coloured villas, and plenty of outdoor cafes. Being there felt like witnessing a Renoir or Matisse painting coming to life before my eyes.
Nicoletta

The fuel crisis has spurred many Australians to abandon their original plans for the holiday period in exchange for creative alternatives

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“Australia is a driving country,” says Natalia Kozlov, a lawyer and mother-of-three living in regional New South Wales.

“We all love our road trips,” the 40-year-old says. “We don’t have our high-speed rail that Europe and other countries have – we all drive.”

Explore wild scenery, empty beaches and beautiful villages on the 110-mile Corfu trail, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year

The riverside was heaving. Families spilled from cafes. A marching band trooped on to the bridge, their tasselled metal helmets dazzling in the sun. Priests with bushy beards delivered ageless chants from beneath their cylindrical kalimavkion hats. Men let off shotguns, terrifying the air. Easter Monday in Lefkimmi.

We hadn’t planned this. Simply right place, right time. The capital of southern Corfu, Lefkimmi is a working town, untroubled by tourism. There are Venetian-style houses – variously neat, tatty and decrepit – but no “attractions” to speak of. Just Corfiots doing Corfiot things: chewing the fat in their finest for this religious celebration – Greek Orthodox Easter, which falls on 12 April in 2026 – plus zipping about on scooters, drinking coffee, buying baklava and ice-creams.

With its never-ending street theatre and labyrinthine medina, this timeless city swallows you whole – and reveals new secrets with each visit

The rising sun sets fire to the snow-covered caps of the Atlas mountains. Within moments, the shadowy gorges are gleaming with warm terracotta hues. I turn my back on north Africa’s highest peaks and look north where Marrakech – nicknamed the Red City – rests like a jagged ruby amid the jade swathes of palms and the silvery sheen of olive groves.

Swinging 800 metres (2,625ft) above the stony desert in a giant wicker basket, I try to imagine what this scene would have looked like when camel trains trooped this way, loaded with salt, spices and enslaved humans bound for Marrakech’s souks.

It’s a quintessentially Welsh experience of castles, cockles and cawl when you explore the south-west of the country by train, bus and a new footpath opening this week

Sit on the left when you catch the train from Swansea to Carmarthen, and you can watch huge sandy estuaries unspool outside the window. There’s a curlew standing by the water, an egret-haunted pool in the wetlands, and a boardwalk along the foreshore, part of the 870-mile Wales Coast Path. It has been a six-hour, four-train journey to get here from Essex, but I’ll soon be on foot.

Carmarthenshire has picturesque railways, a network of buses, and some epic long-distance paths, so it makes for an ideal car-free break. The 13-mile Tywi Valley Path (officially opening in time for Easter) will link Abergwili near Carmarthen and Ffairfach near Llandeilo, helping walkers and cyclists access some lovely scenery. I’m visiting just before Saint David’s Day, and there are daffodils everywhere. Carmarthenshire offers a quintessentially Welsh experience, packed with castles, cockles and cawl (stew).

Beyond the Belgian capital’s more obvious sights lies a thriving district known for its classic Belgian cuisine, alternative art scene and gigantic flea market

The Brusseleir dialect that’s still spoken in much of the Marolles dates back to the middle ages, a symbol of the independence of this proudly working-class neighbourhood in central Brussels. Located between the Palace of Justice and Halle Gate, it’s always been an inclusive refuge for immigrants from Europe and north Africa. The must-see Brussels tourist attractions of the Grand-Place central square and Mannekin-Pis statue are within walking distance, but the Marolles offers a very different experience: fashion, antiques and bric-a-brac shopping; alternative creative centres and provocative graffiti; characteristic estaminets (hybrid pub, cafe, bistros) specialising in hearty local dishes; and artisan breweries.

The luscious chocolate and apricot torte is the stuff of legend in the grand, old world of Viennese coffeehouses. But which makes the tastiest?

I’m on a tram on Vienna’s Ringstrasse as towering facades, columns, statues and domes drift past, each more ornate than the last. Here, the State Opera; there, the Austrian parliament, built in the Greek neoclassical style.

As I gawp, I shove cake in my mouth. After all, Vienna isn’t just the city of music, or lavish architecture. Thanks, in part, to its centuries-old coffeehouse culture, it’s also one of Europe’s finest pastry destinations. Cake (or more precisely, torte, kuchen or Mehlspeisen) has its own day here – “Sweet Friday”, the most delicious of Catholic customs, when meat dishes are replaced with sweets. I have been introduced to it via the medium of Marillenknödel – apricot dumplings.

Join the Famous Five in Dorset, relive Springwatch in the Peak District … our selection of Easter treats will keep all the family entertained

Spring has arrived at Wicken Fen, one of Europe’s most important wetlands, and with it the first summer migrants. Chiffchaffs are usually the earliest, with their rhythmic song ringing out across the fens. Then, if the weather is mild, blackcaps and willow warblers might join them. Listen closely, especially early morning or at dusk, for the foghorn-like calls of the booming bittern across the reedbeds. There’s a pushchair- and wheelchair-friendly boardwalk around Sedge Fen, and wheelchair-accessible wildlife hides. Look out for the electric blue flash of a kingfisher, and male marsh harriers performing their dramatic sky-dancing flights as the breeding season gets under way, before the cuckoos arrive in late April.
From £10 adults, £5 children (under-5s free), nationaltrust.org.uk

Your top tips for seasonal outings from birdwatching to gorgeous gardens, amazing architecture and more
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Last April, I based myself in Oban and took my teenagers puffin-watching at Lunga, off Mull, in the Treshnish Isles, with an organised tour (Staffa Tours) by ferry and foot. It was a real delight. The guides were brilliant and helpful, especially with my mobility issues, and we were surprised and amazed at how tame and friendly the puffins were – allowing us to get great views of their faces from as near as 5ft or so. Next spring, we are going again as this is the best time to see them arriving in their thousands.
April

The ancient city – with its gardens, hammams and Moorish architecture – comes alive in spring and its Holy Week processions are among the most authentic in Andalucía

As I turned the corner on a narrow, cobbled street in Granada, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a slightly sinister re-enactment society. Mysterious men dressed in white robes and tall, conical, face-covering hats with slits for their eyes were followed by women in black dresses and mantillas, holding pillar candles and crosses, then children wearing caped cloaks, carrying baskets of prayer cards.

It was indeed a re-enactment of sorts, but deeply rooted in Catholicism, representing the Passion of Christ, staged during Holy Week (Semana Santa), which runs from 29 March to 5 April this year. Easter processions are held across the country, but this Andalucían city hosts one of the most authentic in Spain.

Former mill towns in the West Pennine Moors tell the story of the workers’ rebellion against power looms, the new machines decimating their livelihoods

There’s a massive hole in the ground at the top of Whinney Hill – a shale quarry that once supplied raw materials for Accrington’s famous Nori brickworks (as used in the Empire State Building and Blackpool Tower). It’s fitting, as there’s a chasm-wide gap in history when it comes to this unprepossessing spot on the edge of the West Pennine Moors.

On the morning of 24 April 1826, about 1,000 weavers met on the hilltop to plan their day and, no doubt, get the lie of the land and the weather before setting off. A banking crisis in December of the previous year – dubbed the Panic of 1825 by historians – had hammered the cotton industry. Lancashire’s weavers, who had already suffered years of declining wages and living standards, faced destitution and even starvation.

It isn’t only climbers who get misty-eyed about the awe-inspiring mountains and ancient pinewoods of Britain’s first national nature reserve, created 75 years ago

The waymarked quartzite path glimmers in the sun, flanked by amber-gold grassland. Beyond, one of Scotland’s finest landscapes opens up before me, a woodland of ancient Caledonian pines leading my eye to the metallic glint of Loch Maree. On the other side of the water, a winding river separates the steep, stacked rocks of Beinn a’Mhùinidh from Slioch, one of the great mountains of Wester Ross, rising to a knuckle ridge of Torridonian sandstone.

I’m walking the four-mile mountain trail looping through Beinn Eighe national nature reserve (NNR), Britain’s first NNR, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. In a crowded list, you’d be hard pushed to find a more soul-stirring landscape in all of Scotland.

Our writer first hiked in the Lake District, Eryri and Dartmoor in the 1970s. Their beauty remains unrivalled, but they are more popular than ever. So, here’s how to avoid the crowds

Before we enter the clouds on snow-capped Helvellyn, I glance back down at Ullswater. The early morning sun is bursting around the dark corners of High Dodd and Sleet Fell, sending a flush of light across the golden bracken and on to the hammered silver of the lake.

Further away to the south, ragged patches of snow cling to the high gullies. The nearest village, Glenridding, can barely be seen behind the leafless trees and all I can hear is the gurgle of the stream. It is the quintessential Lakeland scene: the steep slopes above the water, the soft colours and hard rock, all combining into something inimitable. And judging by the photographic and artistic record, it is one that has hardly changed since the Cumbrian wind first ruffled a Romantic poet’s curls.

The historic port is a cosmopolitan gateway to global flavours and traditions. And it’s barely on the tourist trail. Take a tour …

Many years ago, I swapped languages with a young woman from Trieste. It was during one of our half-English, half-Italian practice hours that she introduced the idea of Trieste, on a map, as possessing the shape of a stomach. She described her city (which is also a province) as being suspended: pressed by the sea on one side, enveloped by Slovenia and the Karst hills on the other, with a short oesophagus attaching it to the body of Italy. She also suggested I read la Conscienza di Zeno – Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo’s devilishly funny hymn to procrastination, self-delusion and walking around in search of a suitable cafe, and warned me about the ruffian wind.

It would be almost two decades before I finally visited Trieste, bringing with me enough anticipation to tempt disappointment (unfounded) and the itinerary of a food writer. I carried the image of a stomach too, fitting in so many ways for this remarkable food city, not least for making its geography vivid, which in turn explains so much about its history. Once a coastal fishing village, colonised by the Romans, raided by the Venetians, entrusted to the Habsburg monarchy in Vienna (for four centuries, which included a prolonged heyday), appended to the newly united Kingdom of Italy, fought over, briefly independent, handed back to Italy in 1954, from which point it developed into what is today one of the most outward looking and dynamic cities in Italy. Trieste, it seems, has digested and assimilated, meaning its complex history is reflected in the architecture, dialect, music, literature, sports, civic nature and multifaceted food culture: surely one of the most intriguing and rewarding in Italy.

The wild moors and gentle dales of the UK’s oldest national park are just as inviting today as they were when it was created in 1951

Look at a satellite photograph of Britain taken on a clear night and the only things visible are the glowing street lights of towns and cities. If you cast your eyes to the centre of northern England, the distinctive, cupped-hand-shaped boundary of the Peak District national park is clearly outlined as an island of darkness washed by an ocean of light from the industrial conurbations of the north and Midlands.

It was established in April 1951 as the first national park in Britain. And that view from space gives the clearest indication possible of why this site was chosen – it put a national park where it was most needed in the country. It has been estimated that about a third of the population of England and Wales lives less than an hour away from the Peak District.

Ski accommodation can be prohibitively expensive, but a cosy youth hostel puts the Montafon resort and its glorious runs within reach for those on a budget

‘Want to come skiing in Austria at half-term?” I asked my 13-year-old son. “It’ll be just like one of those luxury chalet holidays, only we’ll make our own beds, cook our own dinners and carry our gear back to our accommodation ourselves.” Osian didn’t hear the caveats. “Sounds amazing,” he said, his eyes glazing to a cinematic sweep of white powder and the chance to perfect his 360.

For many families, the dream of a catered chalet – and its ready-lit fires, homemade strudels and chauffeured lift shuttles – remains just that. Apartments offer access to the slopes at less vertigo-inducing prices, but they tend to come with a minimum seven-night stay. If you only have a few days to spare, or a budget that won’t stretch to a full week’s lift pass, hotels fill the gap, but then you’re back navigating the moguls of cost.

The ruins of Tintern Abbey have inspired artists and poets. Now, the restoration of a historic inn has given visitors a perfect base for exploring this corner of Monmouthshire

Standing in Tintern Abbey, you can feel the magic that has given this small Monmouthshire village on the banks of the Wye and its famous ruin such an outsized place in culture. JMW Turner, Gainsborough and Samuel Palmer are just some of the artists who have captured this landscape, and Wordsworth and Tennyson famously wrote poems inspired by Tintern. But it was Allen Ginsberg’s Welsh Visitation and his “clouds passing through skeleton arches” that came to mind while I sheltered from a cloudburst in the abbey’s nave. It’s a vast and fascinating site, and seeing it through sheets of rain as the sun went down was really special.

Ginsberg was here in the 1960s, following in the footsteps of the Romantics. But Tintern’s fame came thanks to its inclusion in travel writer William Gilpin’s 1782 book Observations on the River Wye. Gilpin’s writing about the “picturesque” – landscapes that inspired art through their rugged beauty – was so popular in the late 18th century that the Wye Tour was created to meet tourist demand, one of the first package trips in British travel history.

Feted for its warm winters and famous lemons, the seaside border town has attracted artists and writers from around the world

‘It’s not France, it’s not Italy, it’s Menton.” The seaside town on the French-Italian border has changed identities many times in its history. It was the only town in France completely annexed by the Italians during the second world war, but has also belonged to the Grimaldis of Monaco, was part of the kingdom of Sardinia, and only became French after a public vote in 1860. Today, ignoring the colours of Il Tricolore and Le Tricolore, almost everything is painted in various shades of yellow, a celebration of the town’s reliance on its beloved lemon.

Mauro Colagreco, the chef at the spectacular Mirazur restaurant, a few steps from the border, takes me up into the hills to visit one of his lemon and citrus fruit suppliers. “You can eat the peel of a Menton lemon; it has a thick, sweet rind. You can eat the whole thing; it’s totally organic and very juicy.” Menton’s microclimate, its warm winters, terraced hills and sandy soil make it perfect for growing citrus fruit. “What’s particular to the Menton lemon is that it has a smile, a small curvy fold at one end,” says Colagreco, who uses them in his restaurant alongside exploring the possibilities of Star Ruby grapefruits, yuzu confit and kumquats.

From the Venetian lagoon to the sparkling Med, these island getaways offer a welcome change of pace just a short hop from the mainland

Connected to the German mainland by a single rail causeway, Sylt is just over three hours from Hamburg by direct train. The largest of the North Frisian islands, it slices through the North Sea and the Wadden Sea, with salt marshes and mudflats to the east and 25 miles of white sands sweeping along the western coast, grassy dunes buffering the bracing winds.

Book an overnight stay in the cosy smuggler’s cottage on Looe Island and you get to enjoy this marine nature reserve after the day trippers have gone home

It is just after dawn and from a viewpoint on Looe Island, Cornwall, I watch two seals on the beach below. The pair entwine in the surf, her freckled, creamy belly against his, flippers wrapped around each other, eyes closed in blissful bonding. I feel like a peeping Tom, watching from behind a bush. It feels too intimate a moment to be spying upon, but the emerald-eyed cormorants guarding the beach seem unbothered.

I had arrived on Looe Island, also known as St George’s Island, off the south coast of Cornwall, the previous morning via the romantically named Night Riviera sleeper train from London, changing early in the morning in Liskeard, then 15 minutes across the waves in a small fishing boat. The island is managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and can only be accessed on organised visits, and while most people come on day trips, I’m staying for a little longer. I have come loaded down with all the food and bedding I will need for my three-night visit, but also with the mental baggage of workaday life. Now, that weight lifts as I watch the male seal court his lady in the shallows.

Divers come for one of the world’s most significant marine reserves, but there’s plenty to do on land too – from hiking trails and beaches to seafood tavernas

Greek divers surface around me shouting about “megalo” groupers. I’m surrounded by enormous grins above the water and big fish below. A happy place to be. A bunch of us, divers and snorkellers, are hanging around Agios Petros reef off the island of Alonissos, and there’s a reason the groupers are big here. The National Marine Park of Alonissos Northern Sporades, established in 1992, is Greece’s largest working marine protected area (MPA) – two bigger MPAs have just been created, but are not yet operational. The protective measures appear to be working, judging by the size, abundance and diversity of marine life – glassy waters teeming with colourful fish and precious shells make swimming here an absolute dream.

For those who like to go deeper, Alonissos is the site of Greece’s first underwater archaeological park and museum – the impressive Peristera wreck, with its giant cargo of amphorae preserved from the 5th century BC. This one is for certified divers descending with accredited local dive centres. I’m with one of those schools, Ikion Diving, but today we’re doing something more accessible. We’re in the village of Steni Vala for the launch of a citizen science project, the Highly Protected Mediterranean Initiative (much more fun than it sounds). Ikion is partnering with the universities of Thessaloniki and the Aegean to offer free snorkelling and diving trips logging native and alien species. I’m worried about my fish ID skills, but the effervescent biologist Katerina Konsta runs a great briefing and we’re given dive slates with images to mark (imparting a childish delight at playing scientist).

People from across the world queue for hours to get a video taken on the famous ‘Gateway to Heaven’ rooftop in the heart of Brazil’s most iconic city

It was day three of the British family’s holiday in Brazil and, as the sun rose over Rio’s undulating mountains, they set off for the city’s most talked about tourist haunt.

“It’s our first time in Brazil. We’re really looking forward to it,” said Paul Boswell, a 58-year-old builder from Basildon, Essex, before clambering on to the motorbike that would carry him there.

Over the past 21 years, Village Ways has been leading low-impact tours of remote communities in the foothills of the Himalayas, supporting traditional ways of life and offering a rare glimpse of pristine landscapes and wildlife

Kathdhara village is a riot of colour as the early evening light turns the clouds the rosy hue of Himalayan salt. Bright red chillies lie drying in front of cornflower blue doorways. The pink of a sari and the orange of marigolds pop against a backdrop of verdant terraced fields, where cabbages grow in perfect rows like a picture from a Peter Rabbit book.

Just 22 families live in this remote hamlet in Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, north-east India. As we stroll with our guide, Deepak, taking in views of the layered hills and soaring, snow-capped Panchachuli peaks beyond, we are welcomed by villagers tending homes and gardens, strings of Diwali fairy lights adding extra sparkle to the scene.

I’m here to explore the foothills of the Himalayas and sample village life on a walking holiday with Village Ways, a pioneer of responsible, community-based tourism in India, which is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year. Dreamed up by Manisha and Himanshu Pande, the couple who run the Khali Estate, a small hotel in the reserve, the goal is to help address urban migration and support traditional rural life through low-impact tourism. Village Ways launched in 2005 with just five villages in the reserve, which guests hike between, and now more than 30 villages are involved in different parts of the country, from Madhya Pradesh to Kerala.

Perched high above a frozen lake, Grimsel Hospiz in the Bernese Oberland offers an unusual winter escape, with gourmet food, a hot tub, star-filled skies and no distractions

Near the top of the Grimsel Pass in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, a small crowd had gathered to take photographs. We were surrounded by bulky mountains and rippling glaciers, but all eyes were focused on a silvery granite chalet with apple-red shutters, its foundations deep in snow.

It was early February and, one after another, we posed in front of it as if standing beside a celebrity. Which in a way we were, because the proud building was the Grimsel Hospiz, the country’s oldest recorded mountain inn and a place that predates Westminster Abbey.

From jazz in Rotterdam and hip-hop in Paris to brass bands on the beach in Blackpool, the Guardian’s music editor chooses the best European festivals that can be reached by rail

Paris has some great festivals, such as Cercle (22-24 May), with dance music stars against the backdrop of planes and rockets in an outdoor aerospace museum, but the most accessible and democratic is Fête de la musique, which began in Paris in 1982 but is now popular across the country. It is a loose event encompassing dozens of free, semi-impromptu outdoor performances all over each host city, including plenty in Lille, which is even cheaper and quicker to get to than Paris on the Eurostar from London.

From packrafting in Luxembourg to cycling in Slovenia and eclipse-spotting in Spain, here are some great ways to get the kids into the wild

Several companies offer affordable multi-activity trips for families in Greece, but if you’re looking for something less frenetic, and a bit more challenging for teenagers, how about Greek island-hopping by sea kayak? Running on regular dates through the summer months, Trekking Hellas’s three-day, two‑night odysseys in the Ionian Sea start in Nidri, on Lefkada, and paddle on past Skorpios to Meganisi, camping out at Lakka before continuing the next day to Mikros Gialos for a second night under the stars before turning for home. There are stops for swimming, resting and barbecues along the way, and some thrilling cave detours, but with about six hours of paddling a day, the minimum age is 14.
From €352pp including kayaking and camping equipment, guiding and meals (trekking.gr)

On a tight budget, we stayed in a bothy, climbed a mountain, looked for Nessie and – best of all – made memories that money can’t buy

‘There! There – I can see it!” The cries of my four-year-old echoed around the ruins of 13th-century Urquhart Castle, causing a group of US tourists to come running over to the corbelled bartizans (overhanging turrets) where we stood. “It’s Nessie, I saw her,” he insisted, pointing at the ripples spinning out from the back of a sightseeing vessel on Loch Ness.

This was day four of a budget, week-long Scotland adventure for the two of us, and we were spending the day in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the country’s most famous body of water, looking for the fabled monster.

Mountain hikes, river swims and centuries-old traditions appeal to the whole family on a trip to the Balkans

‘Uno, Uno, Uno No Mercy!” the six-year-old son of our hosts for the day bellows while leading my boys, 10 and 12, into his dimly lit corrugated iron home. I let out a little sigh of relief. The popular card game is a much-needed icebreaker as ominous clouds close in on the remote stan (the Albanian word for a shepherd dwelling). Despite the language barrier, much laughter and consternation soon spill out of the darkness, just as hail hammers down on the tin roof. Dogs bark, chickens cluck and sheep bleat as the thunder grows louder, and we all – our eight hosts, seven guests and one guide – shelter in the tiny kitchen, the living room-cum-bedroom (now Uno parlour), or on the veranda.

It’s day two of a seven-day trip with Undiscovered Balkans, crisscrossing between Albania and Montenegro on foot and by car. Having always wanted to hike the Peaks of the Balkans trail, a 119-mile (192km) hike linking Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania, I jumped at the chance to sample this new guided itinerary. Combining some of the region’s most famous hikes with gentler excursions for kids, such as a day experiencing life as a shepherd, or visits to remote swimming spots, it seemed a novel alternative to our usual “get a map and hope for the best” approach to hiking holidays.

Alpine playgrounds, unforgettable train rides and white-water rafting feature in our readers’ family trips from Norway to the Netherlands

• Tell us about a trip to a UK national park or national nature reserve – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Travelling by rail in Europe gives you plenty of opportunity for ad-hoc adventure. We were returning from a ski trip in Italy and took the Bernina Express part of the way. We’d heard that if you disembark at Bergün, leave your luggage at the station and take the train back one stop to Preda village it’s possible to sledge between the two stations. So there we found ourselves renting traditional wooden sledges from Preda and walking the short distance to the start of the tobogganing run. What we thought might be a gentle run into town turned into a fast and fun-filled couple of hours as we hurtled down the tree-lined course. At times it felt like we were in the game Mario Kart and at one point a children’s birthday party overtook us, the birthday girl’s sledge trailing balloons. About 5 miles later we arrived back in Bergün, before continuing our train journey onwards.
Layla Astley

As the Peaky Blinders film is released this week, we follow in the footsteps of the Shelbys, make a heavy metal pilgrimage and find the city’s best places to eat, drink and dance

The runaway success of the TV crime drama Peaky Blinders has been credited with boosting tourism to Birmingham and the West Midlands since it first aired in 2013, even though much of the series was actually shot farther north, in Merseyside, Yorkshire and Manchester. The release this week of the Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man (much of which was filmed in and around Birmingham this time) will undoubtedly generate a new wave of interest, particularly in the Black Country Living Museum in nearby Dudley, whose authentic recreations of streets, houses and industrial workshops appear in key scenes in the TV show and the film – most notably as the location for Charlie Strong’s yard (pictured below).

A guided walk through North Yorkshire woodland throws up some thrilling surprises by honing in on sound over sight

At the outset, Richard Baines says: “You don’t need binoculars.” This is not what I expect to hear on a walk where the main focus is birds. The sun has yet to rise, but we can see our way across muddy ground crunchy with ice. That is the next surprise in a day that will be full of them: we are still in February but Richard points out that ornithological spring is well under way. “Birds are starting to sing,” he says. “Some, like the crossbill, might already have laid eggs.”

We follow a path up to an open ridge, but bird sounds are conspicuously absent. Richard turns back and heads down into a sheltered wooded valley. We have driven up from Pickering to the North York Moors, an area he has been exploring for more than 40 years, his experiences charted in recent memoir The Rarity Garden. As a 14-year-old budding ornithologist he decided to learn bird songs and calls. “I had spent too many woodland walks being disappointed by not seeing any birds, but I could hear a great deal,” he says. “When I started to prioritise sound above sight, the trees came alive and I have never had a bad woodland walk since.” Our walk today aims to land that message for me.

Hitting the piste in Verbier doesn’t come cheap, but in laid-back La Tzoumaz you can access the same pistes without such a steep price tag

I’m standing at 3,330 metres on a tall metal platform with a heavy harness strapped to my back, gazing in awe at the snow-covered Matterhorn, Mont Blanc and the Dents du Midi ridge. It’s a gorgeous distraction while I wait to be clipped in and launched down the valley at 120 kilometres an hour. This is the Mont Fort zip line, the highest in the world. I sit with my legs dangling over the precipice, then with a stomach-churning clunk the mechanism releases and I speed through the air over tiny figures skiing below. It’s exhilarating and over too soon. I’m grinning ear to ear, my lungs full of high mountain air.

I’m in Verbier, one of Switzerland’s most famous ski resorts. With access to 410km of pristine piste, excellent alpine food and a legendary après-ski culture, what’s not to like? Well, for many, the price. Verbier has long been favoured by A-listers and royalty, with eye-watering prices to match. Happily, there is a way to enjoy the same slopes, with much less of a financial hit. Stay in the village of La Tzoumaz (pronounced La Tsoo-mah), where accommodation can be half the price of Verbier, and you’re one chairlift away from the entire Four Valleys ski area. And as I discover, this “back door” resort has plenty of its own charms too.

I swerved the tourist traps and went on a bar crawl of the city’s bruine kroegen, the cosy, dimly lit pubs that are the Netherlands’ ‘surrogate living rooms’

Is there anything better than a good old British pub? Well, a Dutch person may prefer a bruine kroeg (brown bar). Often nondescript from the outside and thus easy to miss, these cosy, homely, rustic cafe-style bars typically have plain dark-wood furniture, candles on the tables, aged knick-knacks and faded pictures. There will be dim lighting, usually from antique-style lamps, and they make ideal hubs – they are often referred to as a “surrogate living room”.

The name comes from the venues’ tobacco-stained walls and ceilings, which since the smoking ban started in 2008 have been topped up by dark brown paint. Beers and jenevers (Dutch gins) are the most popular drinks, and snacks such as bitterballen (meat ragout croquettes), boiled eggs and borrelnootjes (nuts with a crispy coating) are often available too. The choice of background music is a vital component; soft vintage jazz is ideal, so when I visited Cafe ’t Hooischip the Michael Jackson and Culture Club soundtrack jarred somewhat with the cosy, historic setting.

This rugged promontory is thriving thanks to community-run cafes, restaurants and inns, which can all be visited on a spectacular coastal walk

Cliff is sitting in his farm truck scanning the hillsides with powerful binoculars. “It’s the rams,” he says. “They can stray at this time of year.” I follow his direction of gaze, down a golden hillside covered in bracken and boulders to a dark patch in the valley bottom. “Hopefully not down there,” he adds. “That’s the quaking bog.”

Sometimes a chance encounter can transform your appreciation of an area, and that is about to happen for me. I’m heading up Craig y Garn mountain to catch the sunrise over the Llŷn peninsula and the first rays are already stealing over the tops of distant Cadair Idris, rousing giant shadows from under the trees. Cliff, who also happens to be my landlord for the week, points to the house on a hill above the bog: “Where you’re staying was my great-grandmother’s house – or at least what is now the living room. She kept one pig, one sheep and one cow, and made buttermilk where the conservatory is.”

You don’t have to travel to Japan to see a stunning floral display. Every spring, this corner of Extremadura is transformed as two million trees come into bloom

It’s late March and the villagers of the Jerte valley in Extremadura, Spain’s wild west, are twitchy – as if they’re hosting a party and wondering if all the guests will show up. The event they’re waiting for is the flowering of the valley’s cherry trees, which number about two million. So far, only a handful – a variety called Royal Tioga – have dared to don their frilly spring frocks. The rest are still clutching their drab grey winter garb.

Predicting the arrival of blossom is always tricky, but thanks to an unseasonably wet March the trees are three weeks late when I visit. With snow still cloaking the surrounding sierras, the tourist office in Cabezuela del Valle, halfway up the valley, is hastily finding alternative activities for the coachloads of blossom-seekers from Madrid. As with any nature-reliant activity, such as whale watching or aurora hunting, timing is challenging. But unlike hit-and-miss spectacles involving wild animals, at least I know the blossoming will happen eventually. (Sadly wildfires later affected parts of the Jerte valley last summer, but thankfully few cherry trees were affected.)

From magical swimming spots to museums and pizza joints, our readers share their top Welsh discoveries

• Tell us about a favourite break on an island in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

I’m a fan of the lesser-known beaches along the dramatic and rugged Glamorgan Heritage coastline; Wick, Monknash and Nash Point. One of my favourite routes requires a scenic hike across fields and a precipitous scramble down Cwm Bach ladder. The reward is a gorgeous expanse of rocky beach with only the occasional distant naturist and huge stepped cliffs absolutely full of fossils, including some enormous ammonites. The nearby ancient Plough & Harrow feels like a step back in time and you’re being served beer in someone’s living room.
P Thomas

This former industrial quartier is now getting noticed for its community-focused art spaces, lively local bars and inexpensive north African food

On a hill that rises up between Belleville’s Chinatown and Père-Lachaise cemetery, Ménilmontant was once a rural hamlet with vines and farms, before becoming more industrial in the 19th century. The quartier boasts a united, colourful community whose working-class Parisian roots have long been integrated with a strong north African diaspora. Bohemian, arty and socially committed, it remains off the tourist trail with no notable museums or monuments; it’s just a genuinely Parisian neighbourhood. The locals were bemused to learn that Time Out made Ménilmontant one of its World’s Coolest Neighbourhoods for 2025, though tourists who do venture here to discover a glimpse of a fast-disappearing Paris are sure of a warm welcome.

This picturesque corner of the East Midlands is a well-kept secret and it’s great for exploring by public transport

Fallow deer are grazing under ruined brick walls in the house where Lady Jane Grey was born. It’s a moody spring day at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire and there are few visitors. Instead, there are fieldfares in the hedges and skylarks singing in the mist. I’m walking, through bracken and craggy outcrops, towards Old John Tower, a folly that looks like a giant beer mug on the hill ahead.

It sometimes feels as though England’s much-photographed beauty spots get more booked up and overpriced every day. But there are scenic corners of the country that still fly under the insta-radar and Charnwood, around Loughborough, is one of these. The largest borough in Leicestershire, Charnwood is the area between Leicester and the Nottinghamshire border. Its gentle wooded hills and well-kept villages offer country walks to gourmet pubs and cafes. It’s like a cheaper, quieter Cotswolds with better transport links.

In the last of the series, the writer returns to three passed-over places where he used to live – Harrow, Clitheroe and Princetown in Devon

• Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-19

The last in this series of underexplored, overlooked, bypassed towns revisits three places loosely linked to somewhere I’ve lived at different stages of my life. Relocating is grand-scale vacationing, as there are a few months when the new place feels like a holiday destination – fresh, strange, not filtered and tainted by habit or prejudice. Going back years later is part-pilgrimage, part-funeral.

A fabled boutique hotel in the Atlas mountains makes a stunning base for hikes to spectacular viewpoints

Coming up the footpath from Imlil, Hussein and I step aside to let a laden mule go past and I look back. On the wooded lower slopes of the valley are clusters of tall houses, some plumed with wood smoke. There appears to be a lot of building work going on, some of it to repair the damage caused by the 2023 earthquake. The sound of a concrete mixer comes cutting through the cool mountain air mixed with birdsong and human voices. Turning back to face south, I can see the Atlas mountains, austere and aloof, a few snow patches on the upper slopes. That’s where we are going, to the top of Toubkal at 4,167 metres, the highest peak in North Africa.

Hussein has been a guide in this beautiful Moroccan valley all his adult life. “Most people here work in tourism now,” he says, waving a greeting to a muleteer who is passing us. The man is clutching the tail of his animal to steady himself up the steep track. “Twenty years ago everyone grew walnuts and subsistence food,” Hussein says. “Now we’ve still got walnuts, but we’ve also planted apple trees as a cash crop. It leaves time for the tourist work.”

With pine-fringed beaches, crystal waters and affordable seafood restaurants, L’Étang de Thau is a hidden gem worth visiting at any time of year

When I asked Nordine Nid Hsain, the owner of my favourite Parisian bistro, why he sold up and left the capital to join the arty diaspora living in the Mediterranean port of Sète, he said: “What really drew me here was not Sète itself, but the natural paradise of the adjoining Thau lagoon. I love cycling and, after 10 years here, I am still excited to go out every day to explore the bike paths that run around the lagoon.”

He added: “There’s always something new to discover – beaches; wetland landscapes; enjoying a plate of freshly harvested oysters at the water’s edge; riding through the vineyards then tasting the wine in the vigneron’s cellar.”

A cricket match kindled my love affair with the Greek island, inspiring both a literary festival and my new novel

This is not where you would expect an article about one of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful islands to start. It’s the tail end of winter, 2021. Kensal Green Cemetery in west London: the imperial mausolea canted and crumbling, low clouds dissolving into rain. We are still  in that  strange phase of the pandemic when we are masked, newly aware of our bodies and the space around them. We are here to bury Nikos, a man who for me, for many, was the incarnation of Corfu.

I had spent my 20s trying to find the perfect Greek island, hopping from the well-trodden (Mykonos, Santorini, Cephalonia) to the more obscure (Kythira, Symi, Meganisi). None quite matched the vision I had dreamed into being as a child, when I segued from Robert Graves to Mary Renault, then to Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles. Greece was an idea before it was a place: freedom and deep thought, a constellation of sand, salt and thyme.

The best places to seek respite from the wintry UK weather in France, Italy and Germany

• Tell us about a family adventure in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saint-Jorioz in Haute-Savoie will provide a springtime lift for your spirits. On the shore of Lake Annecy, it’s a short bus ride from the city of Annecy, but less busy and with superior lake and mountain views. Hike to the surrounding peaks, towards the lesser-known Col de l’Arpettaz, or cycle on the excellent greenways. Relax by the cool blue alpine water. Behind you lies the underrated Les Bauges Unesco Geopark. The department only joined France in 1860, and has its own Italian-influenced regional cuisine.
Brian Lowry

A trail named after a brutal marcher lord passes through tranquil countryside between Shropshire and Herfordshire but is rich in reminders of the area’s turbulent past

In the UK, there is a proud tradition of naming long-distance walking paths after talented reprobates. I mean the various opium fiends, international terrorists and child murderers who make up our colourful national tapestry (see the Coleridge Way, Drake’s Trail and the Richard III Trail). So perhaps a 30-mile weekend walk dedicated to the Mortimers, and their most notorious scion, Sir Roger, is an appropriate addition to the weave.

After all, this is the man who allegedly slept with a reigning queen (Isabella), probably killed her husband (Edward II), and certainly became de facto tyrant of the realm for three turbulent years in the 1320s, feathering his own nest relentlessly during that time. They don’t make world leaders like that any longer, do they?

A century ago, the Serra da Estrela mountains were Portugal’s answer to the Swiss health resorts of St Moritz and Davos. Now, a historic sanatorium has been given a 21st-century makeover and is drawing people back to the hills

Navigating the high slopes of Portugal’s Serra da Estrela in midwinter requires serious negotiation with the elements, but my guide, João Pedro Sousa, makes it look simple. Angling his lean frame into the wind, he digs his plastic snow-shoes into a steep drift and pauses, scanning the white ridgeline. He’s looking for mariolas – small cairns of rocks, fused by ice, that will indicate our onward trail. “The landscape changes every day so you have to learn how to read it afresh,” he says, setting off again. “At this time of year, nature is a true artist.”

I plod inelegantly in his wake, still clumsy in the frames clipped to my boots to keep me from sinking into the powder. At a quartzite outcrop rippled with rose and amber, we pause and drink in the view. Below us, cupped in the glacial scar of the Zêzere valley, is the terracotta-roofed town of Manteigas – founded in the 12th century and today the modest hub for tourism in the region. Ahead, on the horizon, João Pedro points out mainland Portugal’s highest peak, the 1,993-metre Torre, home to a small ski resort suited to beginners. “This region is full of surprises,” he grins.

A cabin on a farm near Hawick, known for its whisky and woollens, offers wild seclusion – and a great base for exploring an overlooked region

The tiny, off-grid cabin looked almost unreal: made of repurposed oak it stood by a private lochan, with separate cedar sauna, cold outdoor shower, sunken hot tub, and a jetty with two hammocks and a pair of paddleboards. It screamed Finland or Sweden, not a sheep and deer farm in the Scottish Borders. It was the sort of isolated location that would set Ben Fogle’s heart racing in New Lives in the Wild. Two swans bugled my arrival. I felt a little embarrassed that all of it was mine.

Sometimes, we need to escape to a place where the phone coverage is bad enough to make you believe you’re somewhere truly wild. Tiny Home Borders, hidden in rippling foothills 10 miles east of Hawick, is such a place. Last August, owners David and Claire Mactaggart opened a second two-person cabin on their farmland (the first opened in 2022) and I jumped at the chance to stay, swim, soak, and – crucially – switch-off.

Mimosas and violets are already out in the south of France, making it the perfect time for a pre-spring road trip

As I take my seat in Galimard’s Studio des Fragrances, in the Provençal town of Grasse, I limber up my nostrils for the task ahead: to create my own scent from the 126 bottles in front of me. Together they represent a world of exotic aromas, from amber and musk to ginger and saffron. But given that I have left the grey British winter behind to come here, I am more interested in capturing the sunny essence of the Côte d’Azur.

Here in the hills north of Cannes, the colours pop: hillsides are full of bright yellow mimosa flowers, violets are peeping out of flowerbeds and oranges hang heavy on branches over garden walls, even though it’s not yet spring. It is the perfect antidote to the gloom back home, and the chance to bottle these very scents is a joy.

Writers from George Eliot to Goethe put this Lombardy town on the map, then it fell out of fashion. Today it makes a picture-perfect alternative to the Italian lakes

The ancient settlement of Chiavenna, in Lombardy, near Italy’s border with Switzerland, was once well known among travellers. “Lovely Chiavenna … mountain peaks, huge boulders, with rippling miniature torrents and lovely young flowers … and grassy heights with rich Spanish chestnuts,” wrote George Eliot in 1860.

Eliot wasn’t the only writer to rhapsodise about this charming town. Edith Wharton described it as “fantastically picturesque … an exuberance of rococo”. For Mary Shelley it was “paradise … glowing in rich and sunny vegetation”, while Goethe described it as “like a dream”.

There was a language barrier, a mother who burned their letters and a record label manager who disapproved. But Kerry Cox and Hitomi were madly in love

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In my early 20s, I quit my job in New Zealand and moved to Sydney to study martial arts. In 1982, after competing in the World Pugilist championships in Hong Kong, I hitchhiked around Japan for a month or so, then headed for Korea via ferry in January of 1983. I’d heard air fares were cheap from Korea. No internet back then!

While boarding, I was approached by a very attractive Japanese woman, with limited English, who told me that if I bought one box of bananas and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black label, I could pay for most of my trip in Korea. These items were very much in demand back then.

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It’s an ideal time of year for snuggling up on a countryside break. We pick accommodation from shepherds’ huts in Somerset to a chateau in Wales

Six vintage-style “luxury huts” spaced out around a lake make up The Shepherds Hut Retreat in south Somerset. They have modern kitchens and bathrooms, private areas with hot tubs, and fancy features such as telescopes, gin bars, pizza ovens, fire pits and hammocks. There is also a woodland sauna on site. The newest hut, 1898, is the grandest, and is inspired by the Pig hotels. It is a mile’s walk to the Lord Poulett Arms, a thatched 17th-century pub in the village of Hinton St George, and half an hour’s drive to the beaches of the Jurassic Coast in east Devon and Dorset.
From £169, coolstays.com

Being a passenger in this vast country is ‘a full-blooded immersion in the local’, says the novelist whose latest protagonist is lured by the romance of the rails

I carry my train journeys in my bones, the juddering song of the Indian rail. Our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, famously likened India to a palimpsest, no layer quite effacing the one that went before. That’s how I think of Indian railway journeys. They inscribe on the mind our fellow travellers, our ways, our thousand languages, our landscapes, our climate.

I think of a rail journey I made in 1998 – that brutal summer of nuclear testing – setting out from Mumbai, in an ordinary three-tier sleeper, for Dehradun, 1,000 miles (1,600km) north. The frazzled train fell off any semblance of a schedule. The voyage grew longer, past 50 hours; hotter, past 50C. I remember the metallic burn on the window grilles; the hot, killing wind that blew through them; the sizzle of water drops splashed on the face when theyhit the uncovered platforms in the heart of the country; the melt of my rubber soles. A fortnight later, having trekked to the mouth of a tributary of the Ganges, completing my expedition from the Arabian Sea to a Himalayan glacier, it was possible to look back on the rail ordeal with affection.

As a teenager I wondered what I would have in common with this Nordic island. Then my teacher gave me a book of poetry

Lying in my bed, I listened to what sounded like a woman screaming outside in the dark. I picked up my pen. A month of living in this Icelandic village and I was still unaccustomed to the impenetrable January gloom and the ferocity of the wind; its propensity to sound sentient. I had started to feel like the island was trying to tell me something, had a story it wanted me to write.

Sauðárkrókur, a fishing town in the northern fjord of Skagafjörður, was all mountain, sea and valley. There were no trees to slow the Arctic winds, and I had already been blown sideways into a snowbank while walking home from Fjölbrautaskóli Norðurlands vestra, my new high school whose name I could not yet pronounce. At night, my dreams were filled with a soundscape of weeping women. When I woke, their wailing continued in the gusts outside. That was when I wrote. I wrote to understand myself in this new place. I wrote to understand Iceland, its brutality and its beauty.